On Wed, Jun 4, 2014 at 7:31 PM, James R. Perkins <jperkins@redhat.com> wrote:

Currently the EAR/META-INF directory is not visible to it's sub-modules.
Should we expose the EAR/META-INF directory to the class path?

I've seen questions a few times when a user wants to use their own copy
of log4j in an EAR and they place the log4j.xxx configuration file in
the EAR/META-INF directory. Since the log4j.jar doesn't have the
directory on it's class path the conflagration file can not be read.

Anyone have thoughts or opinions on this?

I think the EAR's root is a very logical place to put configuration files like that. There really is no good other location. Picking a random EJB module and putting it there is weird, and putting it in every individual WEB module is weird too.

If anything, especially with the upcoming configuration JSR in mind, I think the Java EE spec should just demand that EAR/META-INF is on the class path.

So I'd love JBoss/WildFly to have this as a proprietary option, but eventually it should be handled by the spec too.

Kind regards,

Arjan